


Red Velvet Cake

by Jaelijn



Series: Whumptober [4]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Terminal Illness, M/M, Whump, Whumptober 2020, kinda past-Avon/Anna but also kinda not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27120199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: When Avon's world crashes down around him, there is only one person left to call: Vila Restal.Written for Whumptober 2020 and the prompt #11: "Psych 101: Defiance | Struggling | Crying"
Relationships: Kerr Avon & Roj Blake, Kerr Avon & Vila Restal, Kerr Avon/Anna Grant, Kerr Avon/Vila Restal
Series: Whumptober [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951792
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Red Velvet Cake

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever "mundane" AU, moving the B7 characters into a contemporary setting! Complicated relationship constellations are complicated, and AO3's tagging system is inadequate - but you'll figure it out. Probably some handwaving regarding medical/legal details. 
> 
> This was another one that almost wrote itself. I really enjoy this little alternate universe, but it _is_ just as full of pain as the canon. Some heavy themes, so dread carefully.

He isn’t drunk, though he would very much like to be. Drunk, or drugged, or anywhere but lucidly in his own body. He can’t even smoke – it had been that or eating, and on balance he would rather not starve.

The phone shakes in his grip as he types. Texting makes him feel pathetic, but he’s too much of a coward to call.

_Hello. Can we talk?_

He curls up on his bed while he waits for a reply. His eyes feel gritty and dry. There are no tears left in him. It seems wrong to feel sorry for himself, but even that doesn’t make the heavy knot in his stomach go away.

His phone buzzes.

_Sorry, unknown number. Did you misdial?_

He hasn’t – _he_ still has the contact saved on his phone, but it figures that Vila wouldn’t, after what he’s said to him. It’s been three years, after all – really, it’s a miracle the number hasn’t been discontinued. Avon doesn’t want to reveal himself, wants to just talk to _someone_ , needs to just talk to _someone_. He is tempted to call, after all, but Vila wouldn’t pick up on an unknown caller any more than Avon would. He needs to tell him who it is.

_It's Avon,_ he types, fingers shaking. _Please, Vila_ … he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. In the end he just sends it and resigns himself to receiving no reply. He huddles under the blanket, knowing that he should be switching on the heating but knowing, too, that he can’t afford it. He has hit rock bottom, fallen on hard times, as the saying goes. Everything he ever owned is already gone, and now so is his job.

His phone buzzes. _What do you want?_

He can almost hear Vila’s voice and knows that the message is anything but friendly, definitely not a polite enquiry. It’s a veiled _fuck off_. 

_Anna is dead_ , he types and sends, before the nerves desert him. He has no right to unload this on Vila, no right to expect any kind of response at all. It’s unfair to him, and Avon is aware of that now more than ever, but Avon doesn’t exactly… have friends. Or colleagues. Or family. There are probably professional helplines for this kind of thing, but he wouldn’t even know where to start explaining. Vila, at least, will understand what it means.

There is silence for a long time, while he fights with a heavy feeling in his chest that never transforms into tears. Then, the phone buzzes and keeps on buzzing. An incoming call.

Avon fumbles with the phone, almost afraid to pick up, then afraid that he might accidentally decline the call, his hands are trembling so badly. Vila grins back at him from the call screen because he never bothered to delete the photo either. It twists something in his heart and he can barely speak when he _does_ pick up.

“Hello,” he chokes out, hardly recognising his own voice.

“Avon?” Vila sounds tinny through the speaker, even though it’s a decent enough phone. “Avon, is that you?”

He swallows hard and sits up to lean against the wall. “Yes. Hello, Vila.” There’s so much else he could say, should perhaps say, but the words don’t come. He can barely breathe.

“Where are you?” Vila asks. “Are you safe?”

“Home. Yes.” He doesn’t mention that he would rather have liked to bang his head against the wall earlier – just talking to Vila helps.

“Is there someone you could call?”

“I thought I had.”

“Not me,” Vila says, sounding on edge. “Someone else.”

Because Vila doesn’t want to talk to him. Doesn’t want to have anything to do with him, not anymore. A whole other set of pain clenches his stomach. He’s going to be sick. “No,” he says, and, “I’m sorry, Vila,” he says, “I shouldn’t have contacted you,” he says and hangs up, and rushes to the bathroom to be sick.

The next hours blur together. Avon is fairly sure that he doesn’t actually sleep, or if he does, he feels just as exhausted waking up, but he hides under his blanket on the worn mattress and can’t bring himself to move while the light outside fades into night and back into day. He’s sure his phone made some noises during the night, but he hasn’t looked at it; even the movement to collect it from the floor where he’d dropped it earlier is too much of an effort.

At around eight in the morning, he feels up to dragging himself into the shower, which at least makes him feel cleaner, and to eat some breakfast. It’s cheap cereal and equally cheap milk, which is neither healthy nor particularly what he wants, but it’s low effort and he makes a generous portion because why the hell shouldn’t he, at this point.

The pounding on the door causes him to very nearly jump out of his skin. He doesn’t _get_ visitors and he _certainly_ doesn’t get parcels. Whatever it is, it can’t be anything good.

“Avon?” a voice calls out, and there is another knock. “Avon, are you in?”

It’s Blake, his short-time colleague of the social justice rants and the need to drag everyone in his orbit into the next demonstration here, and petition there, and of course there’s this anti-bias training, and that support group… Avon isn’t entirely sure he wants to see him, but he unlatches the door anyway and pulls it open.

“What do _you_ want?” he snaps, and momentarily the anger helps. 

Blake’s gaze flicks over him in a second, and Avon becomes painfully aware that he hasn’t shaved, hasn’t bothered to comb his hair, that when he looked into the mirror after his shower he was ash pale and his eyes sunken shadows. He’s not properly dressed, either. When Blake’s expression floods with concern, Avon very nearly slams the door in his face.

“Well? What the hell are you doing here, Blake?”

His cereal is getting soggy, and Avon cannot afford to waste food. Suddenly he doesn’t care that Blake is there, he just turns and heads back to his breakfast.

Blake tentatively follows him inside, even though he hasn’t been invited in. His expression of worry doesn’t fade, of course, as he takes in the flat. “Are you all right?”

“It’s none of your business.” The cereal tastes like bland mush. “If you came to talk about work, you came to the wrong person. I resigned.”

“I heard. Avon, I had a phone call late last night, asking whether I knew your address, and whether I could go check on you, from a Mr Restal? He said you’d stopped answering your phone.”

At this point, Avon’s phone has probably run out of charge. “Do you always go to bother your former co-workers on the say-so of strangers?”

“I didn’t give him your address,” Blake says as if that made everything all right. “But it sounded like he knew you. I didn’t mind taking the chance to be shouted out of your flat if you didn’t actually need help.” He sounds as though what he has seen has convinced him that Avon _does_ need help.

Avon bares his teeth in a snarl. “You still might be,” he says, though he rarely ever shouts, and he certainly doesn’t feel up to throwing Blake out if he doesn’t want to leave. Avon feels hideously vulnerable, as if Blake were seeing right through him. He focuses on the cereal, hiding his expression. “Fine. I know Vila. I’m surprised he sent _you_.” Vila couldn’t have known that Blake existed, before last night. There is something about the fact that he bothered to find out that curls into Avon’s heart, but there is too much ice there for any warmth to survive very long. “But now that you have convinced yourself that I am fine,” he continues, though he knows perfectly well that Blake has done nothing of the sort, “you can go. I’m not going to offer you a cup of tea.”

“You don’t look fine,” Blake says, with all the tact of a bulldog.

“Go _away_ , Blake.”

Instead, Blake lets the door snick shut and comes closer. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Avon gives up on eating, letting the spoon splatter back into the sugary mush. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“I doubt it. You can report back to Vila that you did your duty, and that he needn’t be burdened by guilt on my account.”

Blake doesn’t answer. He wanders around the room instead – there is plenty of space for that, Avon thinks wryly.

“Doesn’t your heating work? Where is all your furniture? I thought this was one of the best blocks of flats around the area.”

He _sounds_ perfectly polite, but if Blake has ever heard of tact, he has forgotten everything about it. Avon is beginning to think he has done the bulldogs of the world an injustice. “ _Leave_ , Blake. We aren’t friends. We aren’t even colleagues anymore.”

“Yes, it’s a shame,” Blake agrees blithely. “Do you have a… second chair?”

Avon doesn’t miss the hesitation – the stepping stool he’s using as a seat probably doesn’t strike Blake as suitable sitting furniture. “No.”

“Restal seemed to think you needed company.”

“I don’t _need_ anyone,” Avon snaps, and the old mantra has never sounded so hollow. He comes to his feet, though even if Blake weren’t wearing booths to Avon’s bare feet, Blake would have stood over him. “Out, Blake. If Vila wants to check on me, he can damn well do it himself.”

Blake gives him another careful glance, then reluctantly nods. “All right, I’ll leave. But I want you to know that you can call me if you need anything.”

Being alone again feels good for a few minutes, then nervous energy makes Avon go to the bedroom to collect his phone. It’s dead, of course, and he goes to plug it in, waiting until he can turn it back on. There are five texts and three calls from Vila – or rather, three calls and five texts. Vila has attempted to call him back three times before giving up and resorting to text messages.

Avon almost feels flattered to have provoked a reaction out of him, but he can’t quite summon the emotional response. In Blake’s wake, all emotions have returned to a flat, muted state, but he knows that if he sits in this room and allows himself to think, he’ll go mad.

So he stares at Vila’s last text for a moment ( _I’ll find someone to check on you._ ) and then activates the phone’s keyboard. _If you really want to know how I am_ , he writes, not caring that he sounds bitter and hurt and that he has no right, _then meet me. Our usual place, two hours._

Somehow, while the thought of going out wouldn’t have made him shave, the thought of going out to potentially see _Vila_ does. He feels horrible about it the moment he realises that he's dressing up as if going on a date, as if he’s soiling Anna’s memory already, when it is _his fault and it’s barely been a day…_

He stops himself, then, settling for just a plain black shirt and his winter coat. He almost doesn’t use his scarf, but it’s cold and he’s cold, and let Vila think what he likes about the fact that Avon kept his gift. Besides, Vila might not show up.

He hasn’t texted back.

Avon takes the tram into the centre, hoping that there aren’t any ticket controls – he doesn’t have any cash to spare for the three-stop ride. The café doesn’t have table service, but Avon doesn’t really have any money for coffee, either, so he sits in a corner and, when the staff begin to eye him askance, tells them that he's waiting for someone, which isn’t even a lie. He is early, even if Vila decides to come. And if the staff believe they are indulging a poor man’s need for a break in the warmth of the café, so be it.

The café isn’t particularly busy, at any rate. Most people are in and out, taking their drinks to go, especially around lunch break, which, of course, it is. The bustle isn’t to Avon’s taste – he prefers the place when there is less coming and going – but it gives him something to focus on other than his thoughts. When he lets his eyes glaze over for too long, the last sight of Anna swims before his mind’s eye, and he doesn’t want to remember her like _that_ , _he doesn’t_.

He drums his fingers onto his phone case, laid out on the table. Vila never responded to his text, but Avon hasn’t given much thought to what he’ll do if Vila doesn’t turn up. He doesn’t exactly have any plans, or anywhere to be. He doesn’t feel like even attempting to make long-term plans, though he should probably find a job, should probably put some effort into getting his own business back up off the ground. It doesn’t seem all that important, somehow.

But the moment it turns to the full hour, Vila is there, stepping through the door and tugging off his gloves, and Avon realises that he hasn’t really planned on this, either. He hasn’t _really_ expected Vila to show up, and for a moment he wants to run, but there is no way out of the café that isn’t past Vila.

Vila looks well in his three-piece suit with the shockingly red waistcoat and the red ascot he wears as a cravat, as if the roguishness of the cloth could detract from his air of wealth. Vila isn’t rich, precisely – or at least he wasn’t, back when Avon knew him - but Vila knows how to hide himself behind the veneer of _professional business man_ , knows how it makes others respond to him _precisely_ in the way he wants it.

Beside him, Avon is going to look underdressed, no matter that he always used to have an easier time with good bearing. He can’t bring himself to care, just now.

Vila comes over the moment he spots him, easing past the queue of people collecting their coffees for lunch. He is more subtle about looking Avon over than Blake was, but Avon knows him far better.

“Hello, Avon.”

Avon nods at him, drawing his hand away from his phone. There is no need to wait for a call, now.

Vila dumps the gloves on the table and shrugs off his jacket, hanging it over the back of the chair. “Do you want a drink? The usual?”

“Are you paying?”

Vila shrugs. “Sure. I’ll go get our drinks.” He skips away, always nimble on his feet, and joins the queue.

Avon leans his head back to stare at the ceiling. It’s beautiful, in its way, decorated in stucco reliefs that may or may not be genuinely antique – in all the years they’ve come here, Avon has never bothered to find out.

The knot is back in his stomach. As much as he feels safe with Vila, despite everything, he _cannot_ allow himself a public breakdown.

Vila comes back after only a few minutes, setting down the tray with their drinks and sliding into the other chair, a barrier between Avon and the rest of the café.

Avon feels absurdly safer like that and bites his lip hard to shake off the feeling. Yesterday, he hadn’t been able to cry at all – today, it seems as though he can barely stop himself. It’s the sleep deprivation, he tells himself as he brushes a hand absently over his eyes and takes in the contents of the tray Vila brought.

It has the probably most extravagant version of his usual order he has ever seen. It comes in a glass jar, at this size, and there is a towering pile of cream on top of it, decorated liberally with chocolate sauce and sprinkles. Two amaretti cookies sit on the base plate, which, after his bland breakfast, are enough to make Avon’s mouth water, even if they weren’t joined by two generous slices of cake.

Vila grins at him over the top of it all.

“What…”

“You just need to know how to order,” Vila quips – which probably means he flirted shamelessly but charmingly with whoever took his order. Vila has a way of making the most obnoxious habits seem endearing. Vila’s expression softens. “You looked like you needed it.”

“Don’t.”

“Avon, I’m sorry, you know.” He pushes one of the cakes Avon’s way. “Have some cake.”

“An addict’s guide to getting drunk?” Avon asks, nastily, and almost bites his tongue wanting to take it back. “I’m sorry, Vila. That was uncalled for.”

“You haven’t changed much,” Vila remarks dryly and helps himself to his own slice. “I wasn’t sure you’d really come.”

“I have nowhere else to be.”

The statement hangs heavily in the air between them, its meaning crystal clear to them both. Avon takes a spoonful of cream and lets it dissolve in his mouth until the choked feeling disappears from his throat.

“What happened, Avon?”

He knows that, in coming here, he’s set himself up for this conversation, but he isn’t sure he’s ready to have it – but he may never see Vila again after today, and there is no one else who could hope to understand. He stares at the towering cream structure and watches it melt slowly over the edge of the glass. “The phrase, I think, is ‘I pulled the plug.’”

Vila sits in silence with him for a long time, then sighs.

“Was she worse?” he asks, his voice so soft that it almost drowns in the din of the café.

Avon laughs, sharp and bitter. “No. It was my fault.” The admission is like glass in his throat.

“Avon, the other driver had a health condition. You being at the wheel–”

“Not the accident,” Avon cuts across him, across the old words that used to be so comforting. “I had to end it because I could no longer afford her care. I’ve run out of money, Vila.”

“But there has to be some kind of governmental support…”

“Oh, yes. But Anna had an end-of-life policy that specifies that if no family was able to oversee her care…” His spoon clinks against the glass repeatedly and Avon puts it down, twisting his shaking hands on the table. “She didn’t want to be taken care of by national services. It’s why I had her transferred to a private facility in the first place. Her policy was drawn up carefully, but I’d found the loophole in her wording back then, Vila, because I _couldn’t_ … But I couldn’t justify this. She didn’t want this, so I _had_ to.”

“Then it was what she would have wanted?” queries Vila, so very gently. 

“I still killed her.” 

“Avon…”

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t make any sense. I know that. The people at the home already told me that I shouldn’t blame myself, that I was doing what she would have wanted, that there was no hope left after so long…”

Vila’s hand is on his suddenly, abruptly, and it feels absurdly warm against his clammy skin.

Avon pulls away, scrubs his face again. “Damn.”

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” Vila murmurs, but doesn’t reach out to touch him again.

“Why did you come? After what I said to you…”

“I love you,” Vila says, as if it’s that simple. Perhaps, in Vila’s mind, it is.

“Don’t be a fool.”

“Let’s not discuss this now.” Vila nods towards their drinks. “Go on. Your cream is melting.”

It shouldn’t sound as obscene as it does, but it startles a laugh out of Avon all the same. Sleep deprivation, he tells himself, and tries not to remember how they used to be best friends, how easy it was to fall for Vila, even while Anna was still alive, and how much he _needs_ …

“What did you think of Blake?” Avon asks instead, trying to steer the conversation into waters that aren’t full of sharklike emotions.

“Your colleague? I like him. Very eager to help people.”

“ _Too_ eager. Blake would rescue the world if he could.”

Vila grinned. “You like him, too.”

“Shut up.”

That never stopped Vila. “I know you far too well, Avon, my friend. You’re fascinated by people like him, the genuine, the helpful. Not many of them about.”

“You don’t even know him. Blake is obnoxious, manipulative and loud, and if you must know, I think his primary motivation is anger.”

“Perhaps I should meet him.”

“No.”

Vila drops it then, and his grin fades. “Avon, do you have somewhere to stay?”

“The flat.” Not _his_ flat. No longer _our_ flat.

“There’s space in the old place. It’s just me and Liberty.”

_Liberty –_ Vila’s ageing cat. Avon always thought it was a stupid name. “I don’t need charity, Vila.”

“Don’t want it, you mean,” Vila says, far too adroitly.

There’s nothing Avon can really reply to that.

“The offer stands. You don’t have to decide right now – in fact, it’s probably better if you don’t. We’ve barely talked for three years, and I won’t let you use me anymore, Avon. But the offer stands.”

Avon nods, unable to look at him. It’s all too much, all at once, and he’s distantly aware that maybe he is crying into the damn red velvet cake Vila bought them. When he rubs his hands over his face again, they come away wet.

It’s not a great, sobbing breakdown, but if feels like a release, all the same.

Vila waits it out without a word. There are no platitudes from Vila, despite the fact that he is always ready with a quip and a joke. It’s something Avon always appreciated about him.

Avon takes a hasty gulp from his coffee, brushing off the cream that clings to his nose, and tries not to dissolve into nervous giggles.

“Thanks,” he chokes out at last.

Vila gives him a quiet nod, and that’s all he really needs.


End file.
